Belgian police arrested four key members of the Communist Combatant Cells (CCC) terrorist group on 16 december 1985. Since then they have achieved several major breakthroughs in their investigations of indigenous terrorism, inlcuding the arrest of an important additional suspect and the discovery of three safehouses containing explosives, weapons and documents. These developments allow us to answer questions about the CCC and give us some insight into another group, the Revolutionary Front for Proletarian Action (FRAP).

Since its inception in October 1984, the CCC has carried out nearly 30 bombing attacks. When the group first appeared, authorities suspected that it was composed of members of the radical left that has long existed in Belgium, and it now appears that this suspicion was correct. Pierre Carette, the recently arrested alleged leader of the CCC, was a member of the Belgian Support Committee for Red Army Faction (RAF) prisoners in West Germany - a group believed to have been involved in the RAF’s attempted assassination of Gen. Alexander Haig in Belgium in 1979. An article written by Carette giving many details of the Haig attack was among the literature recovered in one of the apartments. During the so-called Euroterrorist campaign of 1984-85, (1) the CCC expressed solidarity with the RAF in several of its attacks.

There had also been speculation on the close ties between Belgian and French terrorists. Contacts between the leaders of Action Directe (AD) and Carette date from the early 1980s - Carette printed AD pamphlets opposing President Reagan’s visit to France in 1982, for example. More recently, on 6 December 1985 the CCC and "Communist Internationalists" in France carried out nearly simultaneous bombings of a section of the NATO pipeline in Belgium and the Central European Operating Agency buildings in Versailles.

[gecensureerd] The theft of some 800 kilograms of high explosives from a quarry at Ecaussines, Belgium, on 4 June 1984 and its subsequent use by Action Directe, the RAF, and the FRAP has long been considered a key indicator of some cooperation between those groups.

[alinea gecensureerd]

The first confirmation that the Ecaussines explosives were being used by Belgian terrorists came when an FRAP device failed to explode in an attempted bombing on 26 June 1985. The fingerprints of Chantal Paternostre - a leftist lawyer - were found on the device, and she apprehended on 15 August [gecensureerd] Belgian police located a terrorist safehouse in Brussels and found the fingerprints of two leaders of Action Directe on the premises. This development initially caused some confusion, as authorities suspected at that time that there were links between Action Directe and the CCC but were unsure of the FRAP’s relationships. [gecensureerd] counterterrorist experts speculated that the FRAP was a dissident faction of CCC [gecensureerd].

Apparently, [gecensureerd] investigations helped Belgian police develop new leads into the FRAP as well, because 16 January they arrested Luc van Acker - believed to be the technical specialist who fabricated the FRAP bombs. It is possible that he built the CCC bombs also, as he was originally identified as a CCC member. The arrest of van Acker brings to six the number of terrorists in Belgian custody and may represent a significant portion of the active indigenous terrorists in Belgium.

Outlook

These recent counterterrorist successes have allowed us to answer several questions about Belgian terrorists and, as further information becomes available, to evaluate their role in last winter’s Euroterrorist "anti-imperialist front". The arrests of the four CCC members have confirmed suspicions about the identities of some of the members. We have also established that the theft of the Ecaussines explosives was an important step in the preparations for the Euroterrorist campaign, and the fact that it was used by four different groups, however, and do not necessarily indicate formal relationships between the groups. Moreover, there are no indications of other forms of intergroup cooperation, such as an operational coordinator or central funding source.

In our judgement, the CCC has been hurt badly by the arrest of its members. It is less likely to take part in anti-NATO attacks in the coming months, but it is possible that the CCC members at large could renew contacts with the RAF and participate in future activities of the anti-imperialist front. The RAF is said to be seeking recruits from among "West European guerrillas" to keep the idea of an anti-imperialist resistance movement alive and would welcome the remnants of the CCC. The RAF is the largest and most dangerous West European terrorist organization, and, if it were to share its resources with the CCC, the remaining Belgian terrorists could resume operations.

In view of the recent successes, we judge that the probability of terrorist attacks in Belgium is low for the immediate future. The hardcore members of the group still at large may be capable of carrying out attacks on public officials - perhaps a kidnapping or assassination - in an effort to win freedom of their imprisoned comrades.

Bron: CIA | Terrorisme Review | 10 februari 1986

(1) The term "Euroterrorism" refers to a short-lived campaign of terrorism that showed some sings of cooperation between the CCC, the RAF, and the French Action Directe.

Enveloped by bodyguards, the Justice Minister of Belgium hurried out of his office building and into the darkened square dominated by the Palais de Justice on the other side. A telephoned bomb threat had emptied the ministry.

''We cannot take any risks,'' said the Justice Minister, Jean Gol, who is also Deputy Prime Minister. He spoke in an interview in the middle of the square here, which had suddenly filled with police vans, black-uniformed bomb squad experts and men in plainclothes who snapped on red arm-bands.

In December, Mr. Gol announced that four presumed leaders of a terrorist band called the Fighting Communist Cells had been arrested in a fast-food restaurant in Namur. ''But,'' he cautioned, ''we have seen in other European countries that terrorist movements have been born again like the phoenix.''

The Belgians, who a century ago abolished the death penalty and live in one of the few Western industrial democracies that do not permit telephone tapping, find themselves these days in something like a mental state of siege. They have recently been shaken by two home-grown terrorist bands - one of the left, the other savage but ideologically mute.

27 Bombings in 14 Months

The capture in December of Pierre Carette, a 33-year-old printer, and three of his comrades appears to have severely cut into the strength of the Fighting Communist Cells, which over 14 months claimed responsibility for 27 bombing attacks on multinational companies, banks and NATO installations, including a strategic oil pipeline.

From the Saint Gilles prison here, the four issued a communique acknowledging their membership in the Fighting Communist Cells and calling for ''a resumption of combat'' so that ''the spark sets the plain ablaze, so that the class struggle burns down history.'' But so far whatever militants remain at large - Mr. Gol said he thinks they are no more than a score - have done nothing more incendiary than call in bomb threats that have turned out to be false.

According to several people who knew him before he went underground in 1984, Mr. Carette was a Leninist visionary who repeatedly broke with other tiny leftist factions, regarding them as foolish or traitorous. But Mr. Carette, described by those who knew him as a cold, lonely and haughty man, seemed to have exercised a certain charisma over a small band of younger disciples.

''He considered himself a soldier of the revolution,'' said Michel Graindorge, a Brussels lawyer who knew him in the late 1970's through a defense committee for imprisoned members of the West German Red Army Faction. ''Pierre never talked about love, happiness, art. For him it was the revolution.'' Worked With French Terrorists

Around 1982 in Brussels, Mr. Carette is said to have encountered two exiled founders of the French terrorist group Direct Action, Jean-Marc Rouillan and Nathalie Menigon, and a French revolutionary theorist named Federic Oriach. Briefly joining forces, the two bands staged holdups to raise money and shared, with remnants of the Red Army Faction, 1.760 pounds of dynamite stolen in 1984, according to Belgian and West German investigators.

In his printing plant on the Rue d'Albanie, Mr. Carette also turned out communiques for a shadowy group called the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions, which in 1982 assassinated a second secretary at the Israeli Embassy in Paris. This connection has led Belgian officials to explore possible links to Abu Nidal, the leader of an anti-Arafat Palestinian group that has carried out terrorist attacks in Belgium and boasted of ties to the Fighting Communist Cells.

While intrigued by Mr. Carette's international connections, Mr. Gol said the group appeared to be primarily a Belgian phenomenon. The terrorist leader, whose father is a member of the Belgian criminal investigation police and whose brother is a paratroop officer, appears to have broken ideologically with the Red Army Faction and Direct Action and did not sign a ''Euroterrorist'' communique issued by the two groups in January 1985.

''He had a megalomanic desire to bea revolutionary star,'' said Andre Dartevelle, a Belgian television journalist who has closely studied Mr. Carette and his terrorist group.

'Politics Replaced by War'

''In his vision, politics is always replaced by war. There are those who are correct - the revolutionary vanguard - and the rest, the bourgeoisie, the traitors, the unions. It is a perversion of Leninism, a revolutionary messianism - bizarre, magic, if you will.''

For many peaceable people on Belgium's far left, the isolation of the Fighting Communist Cells was its most striking quality. Initially the group's communiques prompted some leftists to criticize it as a right-wing band masquerading as Leninist. Solidaire, a Belgian Maoist publication, once ran a headline referring to the group by its initials in French, CCC: ''CCC: Pronounce it CIA.''

''The CCC are politically isolated, swimming against the current, ''commented Roger Noel, a 30-year-old printer and anarchist who spent four and a half months in a Polish jail for smuggling a radio transmitter to Solidarity activists. ''In Belgium, the social movements of the left are now in a moment of defeat. This sort of action was seen as a kind of revenge.''

Some contend that it is not accidental that the terrorist group has its roots in French-speaking Wallonia, whose smoke-stack industries have been most sharply hit by what is known simply as ''the crisis.''Mr. Carette comes from the stricken steel city of Charleroi, and a number of his sympathizers were young drop-outs on the fringes of Brussels' theater and university life.

A Relatively Low Toll

Yet, while the group exalted violence, its actions took only two lives-two firemen called in to defuse a booby-trapped car parked in front of the Belgian employers' association on May 1.

By contrast, a gang known as ''the killers of Brabant'' has killed 27 people, many of them women and children, in attacks on supermarkets and other public places since 1982. The professionally executed shotgun attacks and the inconsequential booty taken by the Brabant killers have persuaded some investigators that they may be a far-right commando group, perhaps composed of former policemen or military men.

On 16 December Belgian authorities arrested Pierre Carette, suspected leader of the CCC, and three others believed to be important members of the group. This is the most important counterterrorist success by the Belgians to date, and should be a major setback to the CCC. Carette - who is believed to be both the ideological and operational leader of the group - went underground shortly after the CCC emerged in October 1984.

Bernard Sassoye, Didier Chevolet, and a female, Pascal Vandergeerde, were arrested with him, and are believed to be active participants in CCC operations. The four were armed at the time of their arrest, but did not resist probably because they were surrounded by some 30 heavily armed policemen. They have been charged initially with associating witch criminals, possession of and carrying weapons, and forgery but police claim to have additional evidence linking Carette specifically to the CCC activities.